


dark commune.

by tenderthings



Series: all soul's day [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Drabble, Dragon Age Lore, Gen, Horror, The Taint, dragon age halloween week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12541336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderthings/pseuds/tenderthings
Summary: Her dreams are changing. She knows, from Alistair, Nathaniel, and the stranger letter she received from Anders after Kirkwall, that their dreams have changed too.(for the prompts: the warden communes with the (next) old god + “what does it feel like, to be touched by the taint, decayed flesh and tortured mind?”)





	dark commune.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for day five of da halloween week.

 

* * *

 

She dreams of a swarm, festering beneath the earth. As the years pass, the image clears: thousands upon thousands of old and new dead, crawling through the dark for their god. She is not sure if they draw near to its prison. They are silent in their steps. She only knows that when she closes her eyes, and listens close, she can hear its voice.

It’s a soft song, a sweet melody that makes her think of her keeper, her clan, and the home she left behind. Before the Calling, she only ever heard it in her sleep. Now, it follows her wherever she goes.

As the months pass and her skin pales, her blood begins to turn black. She feels older than she ever has.

She’s not the only one afflicted and there’s comfort in that. For the first time since the end of the Blight, she feels a pull in her bones. It is not the taint—because that is always there, a dull sound in the back of her throat and everywhere else—but rather, the other wardens. Far and wide, they’re pulled along too.

Vigilant, as always, she doesn’t feel their pain, but there is a terrible sort of fright. This death has come too soon.

The locations of the prisons are known to them. She thinks of traveling down, into the heart of tbe swarm, and seeking their next god out. She doesn’t voice the thought. She knows Zevran will follow her anywhere she goes, but there—there where the ghouls lie, is a place she’s not willing to take him and he will never let her go on without him. He made a promise.

Still, she ponders and the curiosity turns into a kind of __want__.

Her dreams are changing. She knows, from Alistair, Nathaniel, and the stranger letter she received from Anders after Kirkwall, that their dreams have changed too. The details are scant, too many eyes passing between she and them to ever be explicit, but it becomes worryingly clear that hers are not like theirs. No, hers are worse.

In her dreams, she is alone. She is always alone.

She stands upon a cliff, unarmed in her night-slip. The horde lies below, in an ever-growing abyss. They come closer with every breath, but never __close enough.__  It almost hurts her to see their distance, their futile attempts to reach out and touch her. They seem sad, in their faceless horror. Darkspawn are incapable of such a thing.

Then, there is a structure. Deep beneath the rock, a castle built into stone. It is not dwarven, nor is it Tevinter. She half-believes it is elven in nature, but older, cursed. It contains one and only __one__ room. A gate keeps the old thing within, hungering in its bed.

If she was allowed the maps, she would know where this is, but she is afraid of why she needs them so.

She remembers Hespith, the song she sang and the broodmother’s fate, but the god within is a gentler thing. She knows the Old Gods’ name by heart—this one is Razikale, the last of two.

It knows so. Sometimes, in her dream, she stands at its gate. She is bloodied and sick, heaving and dying.  

It calls her name and draws near the bars as she presses a hand in-between. She wants to know its skin. She feels its breath along her body, a cold brush of air. What should be eternal darkness reveals grief, yellow eyes, and a creature, long gone unseen.

Its voice is true, but she never remembers its words, only that it speaks directly to her and she speaks back.

 

 


End file.
